A DISGRACED doctor has been given a suspended jail sentence after he admitted filming up a woman’s skirt.

Judge Jane Miller said Anush Babu had acted in “a totally perverted manner” in committing the offence in a Halfords store.

Despite imposing a suspended sentence on 39-year-old Babu, Judge Miller also voiced her frustration after hearing how he was only facing one charge despite evidence being found of him spying on several other people in intimate situations.

Winchester Crown Court heard that father-of-three Babu was arrested by the police at his workplace in Wexham Park Hospital, Slough, following an incident in December 2011 at Basingstoke Aquadrome, involving a child.

Police officers seized Babu’s mobile phone and computer, where they found video clips of him spying on people in intimate situations.

The doctor, of Mayflower Close, Chineham, was subsequently charged with 11 counts relating to voyeurism.

However, at a hearing in November, the prosecution agreed to drop all 11 counts, to which Babu had pleaded not guilty, after two psychiatrists agreed that the filming was a form of obsessive compulsive disorder, and not for sexual gratification.

The father-of-three pleaded guilty to one count of committing an act outraging public decency, which related to a five-second video clip, taken on his mobile phone, up a woman's skirt in a Halfords store that was of a lewd, obscene and disgusting nature.

Prosecutor Claire Marlow told the court that the video clip was taken from behind the woman, during which there was a “fleeting” moment when “the phone goes under the skirt giving a view of the underwear of the lady concerned, who was completely unaware.”

Babu was suspended from his job in accident band emergency by the General Medical Council following his arrest.

Judge Jane Miller asked the prosecution about footage found of Babu's patients, adding: “Taking inappropriate recordings of female patients must constitute an offence?”

She added that it was “extremely troubling” that Babu was only being sentenced for one offence, “when the offending, and what he has done, goes very much wider, and would be of enormous concern to any member of the public were he to carry on as a doctor.”

Ms Marlow agreed, but said the Crown had struggled to find an offence to cover the other filming.

Fern Russell, defending Babu, said he was a “sick man” who “may well be unsuitable to practice as a doctor.”

She added his mental health problems related to “serious issues” during his childhood which had led to the obsessive behaviour, but told the court he is now receiving treatment and taking medication.

Miss Russell added: “This is a man of otherwise good character. He's hard working and able and a much-liked doctor.”

She said Babu filed for bankruptcy in September and had struggled to find work. His wife of 17 years wrote a letter to the court, which Miss Russell described as “deeply powerful.” It described how, following his arrest, Babu told her: “I have destroyed our life.”

Sentencing Babu to six months in prison, suspended for 12 months, with a 12-month supervision order, Judge Miller said Babu's behaviour was a “gross breach of trust, no matter what his motivation.”

She added: “I have to reflect the way the public regard someone in your position. Despite being a good doctor, you behaved in a totally perverted manner that would be deeply troubling to any victims, had they known about it.”

She added: “If the many women filmed by you knew, they would be deeply traumatised.”

Judge Miller said Babu had accepted that he was unsuitable to practice as a doctor ever again, and added: “I hope that's right because that would certainly be the public perception.”

She said she felt her hands were tied with regard to the sentencing, because the prosecution had been unable to put forward any evidence for the voyeurism charges that had been dropped.

The judge told Babu: “The effect of all this is that you have been unable to work. The result for your family has been catastrophic.”